Vela Heartwhisper's Arc

Chapter 22 of 25

The enemy woman walked the castle now, and Vela had never seen her face. She could name every threat outside the wall. She could not point one out inside it. She gathered the only witness who had met the woman at all. Asher sat across from her, mask off, hands flat on the table. "You saw her," Vela said. "You're the only one who did." "I saw a woman," Asher said. "I wanted to see my old love. So I looked at what I hoped for, not at her." He pressed his palms down. "I can't draw a face I never really watched." Vela's chest tightened. Her one lead remembered a wish, not a person. Lysander leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Then stop asking his eyes," he said. "Ask his hands." Vela turned to him. "She touched things on her way in," Lysander went on, quieter now. "Doors. Rails. A spy leaves grease and skin. My old trade taught me to read it." He looked at Asher. "Walk it. Same path. Don't think. Just move." Asher stood. He walked the path he had taken the night the woman followed him. Vela shadowed him. He stopped without meaning to at a heavy chest against the wall, its edges banded in iron. "She waited here," he said. "While I opened the far door." Lysander crouched at the chest. He ran two fingers along the lid's lip and lifted them. A smear of pale powder clung to his skin. "Grove pollen," Scarlett said. She had come in on silent wings, red dress torn at the hem. She bent and sniffed the powder. Her pale eyes narrowed. "No mushroom-folk carry this. Only someone who crossed the Mystic Grove by night." She wiped her thumb through it. "And it clings. It marks the hands that touched it. Whoever she is, her fingers still carry this." Vela understood. She could not name the woman. But now she could name a sign. "Every hand in the household," she said. "We check them. Not for a face. For this." Lysander gave a short nod. "The guards will believe a mark," he said. "They can't stop a stranger they've never seen. They can stop a stain they can hold up to the light." They moved fast. Vela sent Scarlett to the tower stairs and Lysander to the gate. Guards lined the household and turned their palms up, one by one. The kitchen. The stable. The court. Near the armor room a servant recoiled from the light. Her hands glowed faint with pollen. She ran three steps before two warriors caught her arms. Vela reached her last. The woman glared, her true face plain at last. "You bought time," the woman spat. "He sends more than me." The guards dragged her toward the cells. Vela stood still. The stranger in the walls had a face now, and a warning. Someone had sent her, and that someone was still counting down.